From the cover and the title,
you might think Zombie Baseball Beatdown is a fluffy book. You would be so
wrong. Sure, Paolo Bacigalupi has
created a fun book, but it is loaded with relevant social issues that
integrate seamlessly into the narrative.

Three best friends, Miguel,
Rabi, and Joe live in a small town in Iowa and play on the same baseball team.
Miguel is the child of illegal immigrants. Rabi is the child of an East Indian
mother and an American father. Joe, the blonde haired one, has a father who
drinks and becomes abusive.The three of
them have to deal with bullies led by Sammy Riggoni, the local meat plant manager’s
son.

The first sign that something
strange is going on, is an awful, pungent odor emanating from the plant.This is followed up by an encounter with
their baseball coach turned zombie. The group’s attempt to report
this turn of events, morphs into potential disaster for them personally.

When they try to get evidence
of what is going on, they discover that Milrow meats has been turning cows into
zombies. These zombie cows are then butchered,
packaged, and ready to be delivered to at least seven different surrounding
states. It’s up to the three boys to
stop them or the meat will be fed to millions of Americans, thus setting off a
real Zombie apocalypse.

Here’s the important thing
about this book. While on the surface it is about zombies and baseball,
it takes a deeper look at racism and the plight of ‘illegal’ immigrants and
labor practices in general. It examines animal welfare and factory meat
processing. It explores greed and how corporate power can be abused.

I read this book because one
of my readers came up to me and told me it was the best book ever, even
outshining Tui T. Sutherland's Wings of Fire series that he is presently into. He is not wrong. I
can’t wait to share it with other readers at our school.

About Me

Across my teaching career I have taught combinations of mixed age groupings from kindergarten to grade 5. I was an ESL teacher for a number of years and am now a teacher librarian at Charles Dickens Elementary School in Vancouver, B.C.